I made a half batch, plenty for two
I just found out about a taste treat called Japanese Souffle Pancakes. I put the recipe on my list to try soon. They are a little complicated and I knew I wouldn’t have time for a while. Then my cousin chimed in and told me about Rice Cooker Pancakes, a simple pancake recipe you make in your rice cooker. They looked amazing.
One problem. I don’t have a rice cooker.
But I do have a Multi-Pot (a type of Instant Pot) and I figured there must be an equivalent recipe. There were several. So I had to give it a try. The results were yummy.
First, the pancakes:
Perfect Pancakes:
- 2-1/2 cups flour
- 1-1/2 tbsp baking powder
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 cups buttermilk* (I use buttermilk powder and water)
- 2 tbsp oil
- 2 eggs
- Opt: blueberries, cinnamon, pecans, bacon
Bowl, whisk
*you can substitute milk. Or you can add 2 tsp lemon juice to milk and let sit for 3 minutes to create a buttermilk equivalent.
Whisk together dry ingredients, then add wet ingredients and mix until everything is combined. The batter should still be lumpy, you don’t want to overmix.
Okay, here’s the fun.
Cooking. I’ll give you the three methods I researched and detail the one I used.
Rice cooker: Oh, this is a tough one. Pour batter into rice cooker, hit start, 45 minutes later you have one large fluffy pancake.
Slow-Cooker: Oil the bottom and sides of the slow-cooker, add batter and cook on low for 1 to 1-1/2 hour.
Now for the Multi-Cooker. You can use the slow-cooker feature, or you can use the pressure cooker feature. For the pressure cooker feature, you have to be very careful not to burn it. But the reward is a nice, crispy bottom that you flip to be the top of your cake.
First, mix up batter and oil the bottom and sides of the instant pot pan
Second, mine has a CAKE feature, I set that to low, set the timer for 30 minutes and let the pot heat up before pouring in the batter. This sets the bottom and the low temperature steams the pancake until done. Cover and cook. After it shutoff, I let it sit for 10 minutes to finish cooking.
If you don’t have a CAKE feature on yours, use the manual pressure cook feature, set to low and set timer for 30 minutes.
Note: It will not pressurize because the temperature is too low and not enough moisture. Which is great because you can check the cake halfway through to make sure you’re not burning it.
That’s it. Slice and serve.
So next time you have a big crowd and don’t want to be stuck at the stove flipping flapjacks, try this recipe.
=====================
Share your favorite breakfast recipes or use this as an all-around open thread.
SFAW
I gotta confess: I read the “pot pancakes” in the title, what’s left of my brain somehow missed the “instant” part, and I started checking the ingredients for which cultivar you used.
Scott Starr
When I saw “pot pancake” I thought … the recipe would be different.
debbie
I’m sure this is a stupid question: How do you get the pancake out of the pot?
SFAW
@debbie:
A cutting torch would work, or maybe a hacksaw [Unplug it before hacksawing, otherwise you might end up “lit” in an undesirable way.]
ETA: I was also tempted to write “You can take the pancake out of the pot, but you can’t take the pot out of the pancake.” But I decided against it.]
Mary G
How many does the recipe make? That’s a lot of ingredients for one pancake.
Now I want my grandma and mom’s Swedish pancakes, which are thin like crepes. Just eggs, milk, flour, sugar salt, butter. Yum.
Mnemosyne
For New Year’s Day, I like to make something tasty that I can prep the night before and then pop in the oven whenever we decide to get up. This year, it was banana overnight French toast. The one weird thing is that you put the ingredients (except for the bread!) into the blender to liquify everything before you pour it over the bread. I was a bad Weight Watcher and used brioche instead of whole wheat bread.
https://www.weightwatchers.com/us/recipe/creamy-banana-french-toast-casserole/5a381264d2a2ef4028098454
MomSense
Speaking of food, Big Night is on Amazon Prime now. Such a good ?
Martin
So, avoiding the horror show topics of every other post here, I’m working on my 2019-2020 climate change project, which is basically to get my household to the needed 1.5C global per capita emissions level. I’ve got some money I can invest in doing that, my family cares about it, so we’re doing it.
We really began it in earnest in late 2018 when we had solar installed. We’ve now have a year of data to work with. We also replaced an older gas vehicle with a plug-in hybrid with the intention of almost never using the gas side of it. A few other odds and ends here, and by my data, we’ve cut our emissions by about ⅓. My estimate is that we’re at about ½ the average Californian emissions per capita, and about ¼ the average American emissions per capita.
This year we replace the other gas vehicle, but this one with an electric bike. We’ll be swapping out a natural gas water heater for an electric fuel pump one, and getting a new efficient refrigerator (both need replacing anyway). We’re also lining up for a whole house battery.
Electricity use is less than 10% of our carbon footprint. The solar is doing what we wanted, and the grid power we pull from SCE is generally pretty clean to begin with, so that side is decent. The battery would eliminate at least 95% of the remaining grid draw. The higher efficiency refrigerator is designed to provide some headroom for the water heater to move from gas to going on the solar. The water heater alone is around 10% of our carbon footprint, and should go to nearly 0% if I can get this to work. We’re also making some relatively minor changes around regarding lighting and such which should give some small improvements – but ones that should add up meaningfully.
For us transportation is only about 15% of our footprint. The PHEV helped with that last year, our 3rd car is a Prius C which gets rather good mileage, but overall, we just don’t drive a lot. Work and school are close, and my son takes his electric bike almost everywhere, so that’s one driver/car off the road already. That should get down to 5% by the end of this year if everything goes to plan.
We’ll also be making changes to how we shop, which we’re still working on. The single biggest category left for us to tackle is food. We have a few picky eaters that get emotional benefit from food, so it’s an area we need to be careful of so as to not turn people against our efforts. We’re testing meat substitutes and some changes to how we cook, places where we think we can make long-term changes to what prepared foods we buy, etc. We’re looking at instant pot categories now. That expands the menu options in some beneficial ways for my household and has the benefit of shifting gas range/oven to largely daytime electric use. These aren’t necessarily going to be radical changes to how we eat (honestly, I don’t think anyone will care if we put beyond meat in the spaghetti sauce instead of ground beef) but they’re new habits and in some cases kicking us out of laziness.
Our goal is to cut our emissions by another ⅓ from 2018 values, hopefully cutting our emissions down to about ¼ California per capita average and ⅛ American. That gets us pretty close to our goal.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Martin:
That’s impressive. I like the way it’s a whole family project.
Martin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It does help having everyone on board. Everyone has different things they’re comfortable doing, and collectively we pull one another along.
dmsilev
Maybe it’s just me, but when I’m in the mood for pancakes I kind of want them now-ish, and waiting 45 minutes seems like a bit much when they only take a few minutes to cook on a griddle.
Betty Cracker
So it’s a pancake breakfast cake! Intriguing!
jeffreyw
Katie went missing, Mrs J with Gabe’s help, found her down in a hole and we were two hours getting her out. Bunch of groundhog/rabbit holes just inside the woods. Scared we lost her for a while when she disappeared back down the hole for a bit. Mrs J finally got a good hold on her, and was able to get a decent pull.
When she first got sight of her she called me on my cell, said she needed a shovel. Sent a shiver straight through my gut.
Martin
@Betty Cracker: That’s really all that pancakes are – simple cakes that you can make without baking equipment (indirect heat, mainly). This recipe is just pushing it farther back into the ‘cake’ format.
chris
@Martin:
Electric heat pump water heater maybe?
Mnemosyne
@dmsilev:
I think the rationale is that it’s something pancake-y that you can bring to an office potluck or use to feed a crowd rather than sweating over a griddle.
Martin
@dmsilev: Depends on how big your family is. Ms Martin usually spends a good 30 minutes making them (how many are left for the rest of us can be a little variable) but she’s often trying to multitask, so they burn with some regularity. Being able to walk away would be appealing for her, at least some of the time.
TaMara (HFG)
@Mary G: It easily serves 4, if you’re having eggs and bacon with it, I’m thinking 8. :-)
@debbie: NOT stupid. I slipped a knife around it, but it didn’t really need it. Well oiled pan = cake slipping out easily.
@dmsilev: See the snark tag.
@jeffreyw: OMG! So glad she found her.
TaMara (HFG)
I’m glad to see this auto-posted. I was going to post last night, but 524 error prevented that, so I set it up for tonight.
I loved how easy this recipe was and would definitely do it for a crowd.
Mnemosyne
@jeffreyw:
Oh, Katie. All dogs may be good dogs, but not all dogs are good pets. She just keeps hearing the Call of the Wild.
TaMara (HFG)
@Betty Cracker: I was definitely intrigued when my cousin shared the idea with me. Still want to try the Japanese Souffle Pancakes. They are more work and time but look sooo yummy.
Martin
@chris: Heh. Yes, heat pump. Not sure where ‘fuel pump’ came from. The Japanese EcoCute style split heaters are just getting to the US and that’s what I’m trying to make work. The tank and the heat pump are separate, so it’s not unlike a free standing AC unit. You put the heat pump outside (appropriate here for SoCal) and the tank inside, and the tank is just a tank. If it degrades due to hard water or whatever, you just replace the tank. Putting the pump outside also moves the noise outside, since it runs quite a lot.
The good ones also use CO2 as the refrigerant instead of tetrafluoroethane. Though eliminating CO2 is a goal, it’s MUCH less harmful as a greenhouse gas as tetrafluoroethane. Requires higher pressures for phase change (supercritical CO2 is very promising in a number of applications) but otherwise works very well, and gives a market use for CO2.
Kay
@Martin:
This is interesting Martin. I noticed the electric bikes were wildly popular at Lake Michigan last summer. I saw one two years ago-our friend up there has one-and then a year later they were all over the place.
TaMara (HFG)
@Martin: I would really love to make this a front page post, especially if you have photos or video of the your project.
I’m actually looking to ask a friend and see if they would do a guest post on why we should remain hopeful and not despair on climate change. Despair only gets us to inaction.
But in the meantime, your efforts would be great to do as a guest post.
TaMara (HFG)
@Martin: On the food front – I have some resources on holistic farming that could help with your options without giving up meat/poultry if that helps you. We can email about it.
zhena gogolia
@jeffreyw:
I’m glad you were able to dig her out!
Martin
@TaMara (HFG): I’m in the process of documenting and doing the math, so if we’re interested I’d be happy to set up a series of posts.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
You might also want to consider replacing your gas range with an electric. I used gas for most of my life until I bought my current condo, which doesn’t even have a gas connection. My brother, who had lived in places where all-electric homes were common, suggested I get an induction range, and it was a great recommendation. They give electric cooking the kind of instant power control you’re used to with gas, which IMO was really their only big advantage for most home cooks*. At the same time, they’re also incredibly easy to clean- food basically never burns on- and they generate much less waste heat, so your kitchen doesn’t turn into an inferno in the summer.
*I believe people who say a big fire is the only proper way to cook with a wok.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
yes, I know your recipe is always better than mine
heh, I’ve never noticed that tag before
spudgun
@jeffreyw: Oh no!! Thank gawd she’s all right!
Poor Katie…yay Mrs. J!
chris
@Martin: I had to google. It sounds like great tech and I learned that British Columbia is offering a $1000 rebate this year.
Good on you for doing all this work. Now if everyone else would just follow your lead…
jeffreyw
@zhena gogolia: None so happy as Katie! LOL
chris
@Kay:The e-bikes subreddit has 30,000 members and they’ve been madly posting pics for days now. I’ve learned that an ebike can be bought or built for as little as ~$800 all the way up to $15,000. I want one.
zhena gogolia
@jeffreyw:
She didn’t want to Go Gopher?
Martin
@Roger Moore: Yeah, that’s on the list, though our range isn’t that old.
We’re avoiding replacing things just for the sake of replacing them, because there’s an environmental cost to that. Dryer is similar. I mean, we could drop $100K and just solve the problem, but that’s not realistic for normal people. So, for us, it’s also an exercise in how to do this in a way we can share with others and walk them through a similar process. And we’ve already done that with a few people regarding solar.
So part of it is evaluating when to tackle different parts of the problem, how to prioritize, how to step back from how you think things need to work and accept a somewhat different viewpoint, and then how to implement it. That’s part of why it’s a family project, so teach my kids how to do these things as they go out on their own.
So yeah, if those appliances were due for replacement, we’d be doing them now, but the water heater is 20 years (which is long overdue for replacement) and the fridge is 18 years. The other two are 4 and 6 years old. On the dryer, we don’t use it much anyway. Towels are about it. SoCal dry air and nice weather means we usually drip dry everything. The oven gets a fair bit of use though. That’s also a harder one to electrify since we don’t have a 220 line to that part of the house, and it’s quite a journey from the breaker. The dryer is close. The water heater is next to it. Again, easy solutions. We’ll just have to be creative on the range for a bit.
TaMara (HFG)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The new site came with a SNARK category, where we can make up our own snark tags without John having a stroke. That was the first one I made. ;-)
TaMara (HFG)
@Martin: Yes, let’s plan on that. I would definitely make time to make those guest posts happen.
Martin
@chris: That’s kind of the idea. So far, everything we’ve done will save us money – eventually. A year of $0 electric bills is pretty nice, and we had the $14K we could spare to put the solar up. It’ll be a little while before that $14K is back, but it will come back. The PHEV replaced a 20 year vehicle and itself is used (2015). It was fairly inexpensive (certainly cheaper than any new car) and we’re averaging about $10 of gas per month.
Now, most of the things this year should fall in that same category of eventually saving us money. The whole house battery doesn’t – we’re already at $0 bills, and at some point here we’ll run out of ‘free’ (cost shifted) solutions but it does help when we talk to others to show them that they can afford to do this, and what, if any, the downsides are to this stuff. That’s why I’m documenting things.
Barbara
@Martin: We also installed solar this year. I feel about solar, EVs and a variety of other things that if you have the wherewithal, you should be willing to put up with some inconvenience and additional expense, because if enough of us do it, it will ultimately become more accessible to more people at a lower price. This is not a judgment about anyone else because it is not up to me to tell anyone whether they have the wherewithal.
Martin
@TaMara (HFG): Sounds like a plan! Do you have my email?
chris
@Martin: Good stuff! I look forward to reading your posts.
Dan B
@Martin: Impressive CO2 reductions! We think we’re very far out in the forefront with super air-sealed house, ductless heat pumps, super insulation, electric car, LED lights, etc. But you’re beyond us. I’m still cooking chicken and eat lamd and beef once or twice a month, plus wild salmon mostly for Omega 3’s. Chicken is 1/4 the emissions of beef as I recall and I’m waiting for an analysis of Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger’s actual footprint. Between processing and shipping from the plant to Seattle it seems like it may not be much difference. We have a little butcher that gets chicken from 5 miles away. They are pastured and roost in Teepees at night.
I like being a little loose in the rules so there’s no pressure, just easy progress. And I don’t want to come across as prostyletizing. Setting an example that you’re not advocating deprivation seems like a better bet to us. If course the Koch bro relatives would never touch our electric car… They’re essentially written off and the sooner they move to Georgia the better.
Keep up the excellent work and keep up.the stories! Our big surprise is we don’t like riding in ICE (internal combustion) cars because they’re noisy and seem backwards. It’s visceral not a head trip.
Martin
@Barbara: Exactly! When I presented this plan to my kids, they were skeptical – what will it matter if only we do it? But I’m a capitalist at heart, and believe that:
I think the hardest part is that it’s just so overwhelming in scale. So you put solar up – how much did that help? It’s hard to find out. Showing people how to answer that question helps. It’s motivating to see where you are, where you’re going, how much this thing helps (or doesn’t). There are so many things to poke at, in so many different directions, where do you start? That’s what I’m doing with my family, and hopefully can help show others here.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I agree about not replacing stuff for the sake of replacing it. That’s especially true of gas ranges, since they can last a very long time if you take good care of them. I got a new range when I moved to my current place because the previous owner had only a cooktop and I wanted an oven. OTOH, I’m keeping my old car because it just doesn’t make sense to replace it when it still runs fine, passes smog, and only drives 2-3000 miles per year.
Martin
@Dan B: Those assessments are getting done:
Yes, it was commissioned by the manufacturer, but CSS is a reputable research group.
This is one of the areas I’m working through research on – trying to figure out what things really make a difference. And these will be tricky to work through in some other ways – some things are not big carbon sources, but are problematic in other ways. You gotta pick your battles a bit in all of this.
LuciaMia
With a small kitchen and tinier counter space Ive been fighting the desire for a multi/pot; but Im weakening.
An instant pot is a kind of multi pot, but a multi pot is not necessarily an instant pot?
Martin
@LuciaMia: Instant Pot is a brand name. They’re very popular, but I find the whole category of devices to be a bit of a hot mess in terms of usability. Lots of buttons to get lost in.
They also fall into the ‘hey, this is cool for these handful of things’ that either gets old and then the space/utility benefit of the thing goes off, or the cool gadget is simply not well made and doesn’t hold up.
But there are exceptions. Our kitchen aid stand mixer is coming up on 30 years old and gets used all the time. I’m looking for the multi pot equivalent of that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Martin: I bought one of those air-fryers on a whim and have taken it out of the box. I have not yet removed all the plastic or read the instructions.
It’s been about two months. I have been traveling quite a bit.
TaMara (HFG)
@LuciaMia: Multi-pot is exactly like an instant pot, but I went with it because it had more accessories and more, variable settings. But no real difference.
I got rid (well, put in the garage) my slow-cooker and replaced my failing stove top pressure cooker.
It also sautes items before you pressurize them, so really is one-pot meal.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Fried air. Around here we call it “July.”
Mnemosyne
@LuciaMia:
I have joined the cult of Instant Pot. I really like the one-pot meals it makes — I make stews, rice-based dishes like risotto, Irish oatmeal, etc. It doesn’t do everything equally well, but it’s great for lazy cooks like me who want to be able to set it and walk away rather than having to babysit a pot over a flame.
Dan B
@Martin: Good to hear. I didn’t like Beyond Burgers. There are veggie burgers that taste great to me. Haven’t had an impossible Burger yet. I wonder how a 5 mike chicken compares to a veggie burger from Iowa. We may have to speculate. I think eastern WA still grows lentils and other pulses so might work fine unless they’re shipped to a manufacturing plant in New Jersey.
BTW we got good consultants so skipped new windows (40 year payoff, if then) and everything is slowly paying itself off, plus the extra comforts! We still lust after battery storage but the new high efficiency – low cost units (lithium metal?) look like they’re ten years off. And the long dark nights and overcast days of winter mean we’re better off with Seattle City Light’s giant power storage unit (Skagit Reservoir).
Dan B
@Mnemosyne: A friend made the most luscious chicken soup in his instant pot. I’m hoping it does the same for vegetable and fish stocks.
sab
@Martin: I heard on local NPR a year or so ago a group in Cleveland, Ohio that does it neighborhood by neighborhood. They come, persuade a number of households in the same area to go solar, and then get a better deal from the contractors because it’s not just a one house at a time project.
sab
TaMara,
I make your recipes often, and my husband considers them keepers, but this is the first time he has come to me and asked if I would please try that TaMara recipe in Balloon Juice.
TaMara (HFG)
@sab: Awwww….
Martin
@Dan B: I had an employee that went vegan in the last 2 years and she was a good litmus test for this stuff, because she still had a good memory of what a cheeseburger tasted like.
She noted that it’s all a matter of individual preference. For some people flavor beats texture, for others texture beats flavor, for some it’s specific elements they pick up on, etc. So, within the family we’ll try them all and see what everyone thinks. There’s no need for consensus. I imagine in places where the flavor gets buried, we’ll find it, but some of us may simply really want a proper burger.
Martin
@sab: That’s a good strategy. You can also do that within your HOA if you have one. Our previous home had an HOA president ages ago that was an insurance guy and he went and got a group rate for the neighborhood for earthquake insurance and the neighborhood voted and made it part of the association dues. The rate was like ⅓ of what you could get as an individual (which is kind of odd since if an earthquake took out a house, it was going to take them all out, all built the same way and in the same place, but whatever).
You don’t need the whole group to do it, just approach a contractor on behalf of the neighborhood and ask them for a rate based on x people signing on. They’ll jump on it. Lawn care tends to work like this out here – one the guy has his truck unloaded, going next door is cheap as hell, so you get better rates if a whole street uses the same team. We’ve had other work done similarly.
Kay
@chris:
My middle son is obsessed with the electric scooters. He’s buying them used for 40 dollars and modifying them in some way. He bought parts, he said, “from China”. He gave me one of his earlier attempts but I haven’t used it yet. It has a big kind of switch box he put on it that makes me nervous :)
I hope he’s not speeding them up, which kind of defeats the whole idea. I would like the bike better, I think.
TaMara (HFG)
@Martin: I recently found out I have a severe soy allergy. So any vegan options for me have to be soy-free. I love black bean burgers when I’m doing a meatless meal.
Funny, I always thought it was MSG in Chinese food that bothered me, but it may actually have been the soy sauces. (although, I’m sure msg wasn’t doing me any favors, either).
satby
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have both an air fryer and an Instant pot and use the air fryer a bit more when I want to cook some single entree for me. I love my Instant pot to prepare bigger meals like chili, soups, stews, and Indian dishes like dal and butter chicken.
Jane2
@Mary G: You should try a Dutch Baby pancake – a cross between a crepe and a popover.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@TaMara (HFG): Re MSG, I can’t recommend strongly enough this This American Life episode. Shorter: the entire MSG issue is a hoax.
(Also a good summary in this column.)
I have very occasional allergy-like reactions to Chinese food (and once to a Japanese meal), but have never figured out what causes them. It’s not soy and not traceable to any specific ingredient that I can identify, but also not life-threatening so I don’t get too wigged out about it.
WaterGirl
@jeffreyw: Holy shit. I’m sure you’ll never see this on the dead thread, but wow, just wow. So glad you found her and then were able to get her out. Scary. Big hugs to everyone, furry or not.
sab
I tried making this pancake in my 25 year old panasonic rice cooker (not a state of the art appliance) and it was kind of a disaster because the rice cooker kept shutting off after 5 minutes. Then about 10 minutes later I would click it again, and it shut off after 5 minutes. So I flipped the mess into a cast iron skillet and baked it at 300 degrees for a bit. It was edible but ugly.
I tried a couple of days later just using the skillet and the oven at 300 degrees for an hour, and it turned out fluffy and gorgeous, and lightly browned on the bottom.
So I will try it again in my newer fancy rice-cooker/slow-cooker. Hopefully its more modern thermostat will do better than my ancient ricer cooker
ETA tasted great both times.